Anarchic Bodies: Foucault and the Feminist Question of Experience

TY - JOUR

T1 - Anarchic Bodies

T2 - Foucault and the Feminist Question of Experience

AU - Oksala, Johanna

N1 - dc.publisher: Wiley

PY - 2004

Y1 - 2004

N2 - The article shows that Michel Foucault's account of the sexual body is not a naive return to a prediscursive body, nor does it amount to discourse reductionism and to the exclusion of experience, as some feminists have argued. Instead, Foucault's idea of bodies and pleasures as a possibility of the counterattack against normalizing power presupposes an experiential understanding of the body. The experiential body can become a locus of resistance because it is the possibility of an unpredictable event.

AB - The article shows that Michel Foucault's account of the sexual body is not a naive return to a prediscursive body, nor does it amount to discourse reductionism and to the exclusion of experience, as some feminists have argued. Instead, Foucault's idea of bodies and pleasures as a possibility of the counterattack against normalizing power presupposes an experiential understanding of the body. The experiential body can become a locus of resistance because it is the possibility of an unpredictable event.

U2 - 10.1111/j.1527-2001.2004.tb00150.x

DO - 10.1111/j.1527-2001.2004.tb00150.x

M3 - Article

SN - 0887-5367

VL - 19

SP - 99

EP - 121

JO - Hypatia

JF - Hypatia

IS - 4

ER -